Latest news with #FootballItalia
BBC News
a day ago
- Business
- BBC News
Gossip: Man City close to agreeing deal for Reijnders
Manchester City are close to agreeing a deal for AC Milan and Netherlands midfielder Tijjani Reijnders, 26, in time for the Fifa Club World Cup which starts on 14 June in the United States. (Football Italia), externalWant more transfer stories? Read Tuesday's full gossip columnFollow the gossip column on BBC Sport
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Football Italia welcomes transfer expert Alfredo Pedullà
Football Italia welcome one of the top transfer experts worldwide, Alfredo Pedullà, to our team. Football Italia is delighted to announce Italian transfer expert Alfredo Pedullà as part of our team for the 2025 summer transfer window. Advertisement Alfredo will be our transfer pundit for the 2025 summer transfer campaign with daily exclusives on Serie A and Italian football. Pedullà is one of the most trusted sources for transfer news worldwide, and Football Italia, the biggest website covering Italian football in English, will be the exclusive English news home for the next three months. Welcome aboard, Alfredo!
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Video: Bologna star Ndoye opens the scoring in Coppa Italia Final vs Milan
Video: Bologna star Ndoye opens the scoring in Coppa Italia Final vs Milan Bologna star Dan Ndoye opened the account in the Coppa Italia Final against Milan, finding the net with a right-footed finish at the top corner. Bologna took the lead at minute 53 in the Coppa Italia Final against Milan on Wednesday. Advertisement Football Italia is among the accredited media. You can follow live updates here. Ndoye netted his ninth goal this season after winning the ball inside the box from a Theo Hernandez clearance and beat Milan keeper Theo Hernandez with a precise finish at the near post. NDOYE FOR BOLOGNA! 🔥 The Rossoblù lead against Milan in the Coppa Italia final 🔵🔴 — Premier Sports (@PremSportsTV) May 14, 2025
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Scudetto to Serie C - where did it go wrong for Sampdoria?
Italy has more than its fair share of iconic football clubs. AC Milan. Inter Milan. Juventus. Napoli. Lazio. Roma. These institutions roll off the tongue. For many English fans of Italian football, particularly those whose love of calcio can be traced back to Channel 4's 'Football Italia', Sampdoria belong on that list. In the decade between 1984 and 1994 Sampdoria won six major titles, while modern greats Trevor Francis, Roberto Mancini, Gianluca Vialli, Ruud Gullit and David Platt all wore the club's iconic strip. The Blucerchiati of that period acquired a cultural cachet that was hard to match. Yet after years of turbulence Sampdoria, Serie A winners in 1991, have experienced the unthinkable - relegation to the Italian third tier for the first time in the club's history. Where did it all go wrong? Unusually for a club with such a large cult following, Sampdoria are relative newcomers to the Italian football landscape. The northern Italian port city of Genoa has a proud footballing heritage -Sampdoria's city rivals Genoa Cricket and Football Club were founded in 1893 and are the oldest active team in Italy. The most recent of Genoa's nine top-flight titles came 21 years before Sampdoria were formed in 1946, following a merger of middling Genoese clubs Sampierdarenese and Andrea Doria. That unification produced their iconic home shirts - the blue represents Andrea Doria while the white, red and black mid-section came from Sampierdarenese. Sampdoria have always shared a ground - the Stadio Luigi Ferraris - with neighbours Genoa, but for 38 years did not enjoy the kind of success befitting of one of Italy's grandest arenas. Everything changed in 1984. Before the 1984-85 season, Sampdoria's only honour was the 1966-67 second division title. Yet over the next decade the club won the Coppa Italia four times - more than any other side during that period - were crowned Serie A champions, won the European Cup Winners' Cup and played in a European Cup final. After assuming the club presidency in 1979, Paolo Mantovani was the man who turned an unfashionable mid-table team into serial winners. Having made his money in the oil business, Mantovani spent heavily but smartly to propel Sampdoria to unprecedented heights. Big names like Francis, Graeme Souness and Liam Brady were signed, but it was the recruitment of some of the best young Italian talents that really paid off. A 17-year-old Mancini arrived from Bologna in 1982, followed two years later by a 19-year-old Vialli from Cremonese. Nicknamed the 'goal twins' because of their prolific attacking partnership, both scored in the second leg of the 1984-95 Coppa Italia final, the first major title in Sampdoria's history. Mancini and Vialli first met at 16 playing for Italy's youth teams and formed a close friendship that characterised the unity in the Sampdoria squad. "We have a relationship that goes way beyond friendship," Mancini said before Vialli's death from pancreatic cancer in 2023. "He's almost like a brother to me." Along with goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca, defender Pietro Vierchowod, attacking right-back Moreno Mannini, midfield anchor Fausto Pari and electric winger Attilio Lombardo, the duo formed the backbone of a team that won three more Coppa Italia titles - and the club's first and only Scudetto in 1990-91 under legendary manager Vujadin Boskov. "Mantovani cultivated a remarkable camaraderie among a uniquely talented group," says Italian football writer Stephen Kasiewicz. "Despite more lucrative offers the core of the team stayed together." Boskov's side won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1990, and lost to Johan Cruyff's Barcelona 'dream team' in the European Cup final two years later. But nothing lasts forever. Mantovani's death in 1993 was "the beginning of the end at Sampdoria", according to Italian football journalist David Ferrini. He added: "Mantovani's reign attracted talent and kept them happy in Genoa, but his passing - combined with the hangover of the Scudetto success - meant that Sampdoria's best players became prime transfer targets." In 1992 they had lost Vialli to Juventus for a then world record £12m, while Inter Milan paid £7m for Pagliuca in 1994, a record for a goalkeeper at the time. Vierchowod joined Juventus 12 months later before Mancini followed Sven Goran Eriksson - who had replaced Boskov as manager in 1992 - to Lazio in 1997. Experienced stars Gullit and Platt joined for brief spells, but Sampdoria no longer had the same appeal they once did. Enrico Mantovani took over as president but failed to replicate his father's success - and a steady decline followed the Coppa Italia triumph of 1993-94. In 1999 the club were relegated to Serie B. Things improved under the presidency of local entrepreneur Riccardo Garrone, who guided them back to Serie A in 2003 and signed future cult heroes Fabio Quagliarella and Antonio Cassano. Yet the highlights of the 21st Century have been losing the Coppa Italia final in 2008-09 and a fourth-place league finish the following year. Outspoken film producer Massimo Ferrero bought the club in 2014 - taking on its growing debts - but what followed was seven years of selling their best players, spending little on replacements and flirting with relegation on a regular basis. "He seemed more concerned with bolstering his own image, as the bizarre star of his own one-man reality football show, than making sure Samp prospered," says Kasiewicz. In December 2021 Ferrero was arrested and jailed as part of an investigation into corporate crimes and bankruptcy, unrelated to the club. He resigned as president. "The club effectively ceased to function. It's been like a house of cards," says Nima Tavallaey, Italian football journalist and co-host of the Italian Football Podcast. With no funds available and Ferrero refusing to relinquish control, Sampdoria narrowly avoided relegation from Serie A in 2022. But in 2023 they did go down, amid reports of unpaid player wages. With the club staring down the barrel of bankruptcy and demotion to the fourth tier, a consortium led by former Leeds United owner Andrea Radrizzani and London-based financier Matteo Manfredi - and his company Gestio Capital - bought the club, although Radrizzani has since divested his shares. Gestio Capital and its investors control 99.96% of the club, with investment vehicle Kickoff Ventures owning 58% of those shares. Kickoff Ventures is owned by Singaporean businessman Joseph Tey Wei Jin, who was named in the 2015 Panama Papers. Italian World Cup winner Andrea Pirlo was hired as coach in 2023-24. After a dismal start to the campaign his side won seven of their final 11 games to secure a seventh-place finish in Serie B and a spot in the promotion play-offs, where they lost 2-0 to Palermo in the preliminary round. Gestio invested about £45m during their first season, but things have not gone according to plan this term. The month before Sampdoria's play-off exit Manfredi had described Pirlo as "a key part of the project" - yet three games into the current campaign he was dismissed following two defeats and a draw. Andrea Sottil replaced him and, although he oversaw a Coppa Italia penalty shootout victory against Genoa in the first Derby della Lanterna in two years, he was jettisoned too after just four wins in 14 games. Leonardo Semplici arrived in December but, with the club in the drop zone, a 3-0 home defeat by Frosinone at the end of March was the tipping point for the fans as patience with Semplici ran out. The team bus carrying Semplici and his Sampdoria players was pelted by stones and flares by angry supporters after the match at the Luigi Ferraris Stadium. Semplici was relieved of his duties in April with Alberico Evani - the club's fourth coach of the season - tasked with keeping them up. Things began promisingly for Evani with club legend Attilio Lombardo in as assistant and another Sampdoria icon in Roberto Mancini helping in an unofficial capacity. Evani began with a 1-0 win over fellow strugglers Cittadella, but three draws, a defeat and just one win since then have not been enough to keep them up. For Tavallaey, Sampdoria must now start again with a "proper project" in place to return the club to its former glories.. "They have to build a proper project with a proper sporting directorship and a proper manager to help them back to Serie A. They're a sleeping beauty." This article was first published in March 2025. Listen to the latest Football Daily podcast Get football news sent straight to your phone
The Herald Scotland
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
The Scot at the centre of the Gazzetta Football Italia phenomenon
The idea came from Paul Gascoigne's move to Lazio from Tottenham Hotspur, as media company Chrysalis correctly surmised that there would be huge interest in how the cheeky chappie star of English football's move to the continent would play out. What nobody foresaw was that a weekend window to watch world class talents like Roberto Baggio, Gabriel Batistuta, Paolo Maldini and Guiseppe Signori strut their stuff would be so eagerly lapped up and become essential viewing for so many. At its peak, Football Italia regularly attracted 800,000 weekly viewers, while the Sunday matches once captivated three million. These were the days before social media and ubiquitous access to football the world over, but the novelty was only part of the story. The show had its own unique tone, part light humour (see the famous opening sequence of Richardson and Attilio Lombardo performing the Lambada) and part serious news and analysis of what were, at the time, the very best sides in Europe. Scotland hero Joe Jordan, who himself had enjoyed a spell playing and living in Italy a decade or so earlier, was a valued and popular contributor as a pundit and co-commentator. The secret to its success, he muses, was likely down to the combination of knowledgeable insight, and the quality of the fare on the field. 'James and the crew, they were very good,' Jordan said. 'And I think why a lot of people enjoyed it was because it was a real insight into Serie A, which at that particular time was the best league in the world. 'Back then, there were restrictions on the number of foreign players you could have in the team, of course, but there were a lot of world-class players that came from all over the world to play there. (Image: Channel 4) 'I enjoyed doing it, but it was a serious programme. You were working on something that maybe hadn't happened before, where people here in this country were seeing what football was really like elsewhere. 'And James Richardson, he went into that in the build-up to the games, and gave great insights into things like the professionalism of the players. If a football player was to go there, I think they would have learned a lot. 'It was an eye-opener for people to get that insight into the league, to the players that were there, and the way that football was played. And the support as well, because the crowds…all the stadiums through Serie A were more or less full. 'So, for the fans back home, I think the build-up to it by James and his crew, and then the quality of football that they were seeing there, I think the fans would have enjoyed that.' Jordan is now 73 and enjoying retirement, but he was still in management when he was throwing in his tuppenceworth on the Italian game on television, and he was struck by how embedded in the culture of the dressing rooms he was still involved in that Football Italia – and the latest goings on in Serie A as a whole - had become. 'What you have now in England is arguably the best league in the world, so there's a lot of talk about that,' he said. 'But in the days going back to when I was in Serie A, Italy were world champions, so that had a lot to do with it. There were a lot of terrific Italian players then, and then after that, it just grew and people wanted to see it. 'When the programme came along, and I was involved in the game as a manager or a coach, the players at the clubs I was at were always watching it on a Saturday morning before the games. They were up to date on it, they loved watching it, and then they would watch whatever game was being shown on a Sunday. 'It was a big thing for the football players as well as the supporters, absolutely.' As Jordan mentions, the seed of Italian football's appeal to the British supporter at that time may well have been germinated long before 'Gazzamania' hit the Stadio Olimpico, when he and his contemporaries like Graeme Souness were similarly being taken to the hearts of Italian fans in the early to mid-80s. It was a life-changing experience for Jordan then, and one that continued to prove valuable as it opened doors in later years to his involvement with Football Italia. 'Well, for me, it was a new chapter in my career that I was looking forward to going and experiencing, and I was lucky enough to get that opportunity,' he said. (Image: Getty Images) 'I was 29 at the time, and I'd had opportunities which never came off prior to that to go and play in Germany and in Holland. So, at that stage where I was, I was very fortunate to go to a club like AC Milan and then Verona. 'If you'd have asked any of the players at that time, they would have liked that challenge and that opportunity to go and play there and live there. And I have still a lot of connections in different parts of Italy that I keep in contact with. 'So, if it hadn't happened for me, it would have been a bit of a regret, an 'if only'. But I was there for three years. It wasn't easy, in respect of the football, but it was good, and the preparations and things like that were different, and you got on and you did it. But I would not have sacrificed that opportunity that I had, and I learnt from it. 'It was one of the best moves of my career.' As it is proving to be for the current generation of Scots who are now plying their trade in Italy. The fiercely patriotic Jordan has been buoyed to see the likes of Scott McTominay, Billy Gilmour, Lewis Ferguson and Che Adams flourish in Serie A, believing that exposure to the culture and to the country will be to their own and to the national side's betterment. There may never be another Football Italia, but scores of Scottish football fans are now following their progress on the plethora of channels available to them, as Jordan is too. 'It's great for them,' he said. 'First of all, they're playing football at a high level. They will be learning week in and week out what it's all about to play for a club like Napoli or Bologna. These are big clubs, with a lot of pressure on them to be able to handle that. 'They have shown by doing that that they are international players and that is something that will give them confidence themselves, because they're doing it at a really high level and there a lot of things that they will be facing both on and off the pitch. 'I know football is football but there is a lot of preparations and things like that that will make them better players. There's no question about that. 'You're going to play at the Maradona Stadium with 70,000-odd fans there. You can't ask for anything more than that, and they are doing really well. 'That's a compliment to them but also for the national team it's great, because you want your players to be playing at a higher level. 'They are doing that, and they have proven that they can handle that. Therefore, they are clearly good players, and I've got to say that Scotland need them.'
